Discourse Analysis 2011 PRESUPPOSITIONS II

2 Some trigger terminology exampleterminology the king of France definite descriptions to know(epistemic) factives to regret(emotive) factives to stopaspectual predicates againiteratives to manageimplicative predicates after...temporal clauses It was... whocleft sentences everyquantifiers bachelorspecial restricted predicates Julius Seidenstickernames HEintonation

A semantic definition

4 One sentence presupposes another iff whenever the first sentence is true, the second is true, and whenever the negation of the first sentence is true, the second sentence is true. (based on Strawson 1950) Basic intuition: Presuppositions are insensitive to negation. Problem 1: If negation is the defining criterion we will miss out on phenomena that very much look like presuppositions but that regretfully occur in sentences that cannot be negated. Problem 2: Presuppositions don’t always seem to be insensitive to negation.

5 A semantic definition Problem 2: Presuppositions don’t always seem to be insensitive to negation. The king of France isn’t bald......there ISN’T any king of France. If presuppositions were always insensitive to negation, we would expect the overt denial in the negation case to be as unacceptable as the overt denial in the positive case: The king of France is bald... #...there ISN’T any king of France.

A pragmatic definition

7 A presupposition associated with a sentence is a condition that a speaker would normally expect to hold in the common ground between discourse participants when that sentence is uttered. > If there is any reason to assume that the condition doesn’t hold, the presupposition is cancelled.

8 Cancelling presuppositions: the procedure > The cancellation procedure: Implicatures and entailments as well as background assumptions and contextual factors defeat potential presuppositions, so a hearer adds to his or her commitments only those presuppositions that are compatible with all background assumptions, contextual factors and all implicatures and entailments. All remaining potential presuppositions are cancelled. All presuppositions start life as potential presuppositions.

9 Cancelling presuppositions: exercises What potential presuppositions do the following constructions give rise to? -> List them, indicate what the presupposition trigger is and try to categorize the trigger in one of the categories we have established. exercise 4, p.92 -> Why are these presuppositions cancelled? Explain in your own words.

10 Manchester United didn’t regret losing the game, because in fact they won! >> MU lost the gameemotive factiveregret Dr Smith left the university before being promoted to an associate professor. >> Dr Smith was promoted to an associate professor temporal clausebefore overt denial world knowledge: one doesn’t get promoted after having left the university Cancelling presuppositions: exercises

11 You say that somebody in this room fancies Henry. Well, it isn’t Mary who fancies Henry, it isn’t Lucy, and it certainly isn’t Jane. In fact, nobody in this room fancies Henry! >> somebody fancies Henrycleft sentenceit isn’t... John doesn’t know that Neil Armstrong was the first man to travel in space. >> Neil Armstrong was the first man to travel in space epistemic factiveknow reduction arguments world knowledge: Yuri Gagarin was the first man to travel in space (Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon) Cancelling presuppositions: exercises

12 John was in his office when the news was announced, if it was in fact ever announced. >> the news was announcedtemporal clausewhen He is proud that he is the tsar of Russia, but of course there isn’t any such tsar anymore. >> He is the tsar of Russia emotive factiveproud explicit suspension overt denial Cancelling presuppositions: exercises

13 If Cambridge wins the boat race, John will be happy that Cambridge is the winner. >> Cambridge wins the boat raceemotive factivehappy cancelled by the implicature that Cambridge might not win the boat race Cancelling presuppositions: exercises

14 A closer look at the cancellation procedure Implicatures and entailments as well as background assumptions and contextual factors defeat presuppositions, so a hearer adds to his or her commitments only those presuppositions that are compatible with all background assumptions, contextual factors and all implicatures and entailments. All remaining presuppositions are cancelled. > order neutral version

15 A closer look at the cancellation procedure Cancellation must proceed in a fixed order of priority: > Background assumptions > Contextual factors > Semantic entailments > Conversational implicatures > Presuppositions First the relevant background assumptions are placed in the context, then the contextual information is added, then the entailments of what is said, then the conversational implicatures, and only finally the presuppositions. To some extent it’s conceptually unattractive to add presuppositions – which are intuitively ‘given’ information – last.

16 A closer look at the cancellation procedure Van der Sandt’s reformulation of the cancellation model (cf. Van der Sandt 1982, 1988) might offer a conceptually more attractive solution: Add only those presuppositions that could be conjoined to the beginning of the sentence while leaving the utterance consistent with background assumptions, contextual factors,...

17 A closer look at cancellation itself (1) If someone in the linguistics department won the research grant, it was John who won it. If someone in the linguistics department won the research grant implicature the speaker is not sure that it is someone in the linguistics department who won the research grant it was John who won the research grant potential presupposition somebody won the research grant The implicature is not inconsistent with the potential presupposition. The latter should therefore – contrary to fact – not get cancelled.

18 A closer look at cancellation itself (2) The king of France isn’t bald... The king of France is bald... #...there ISN’T any king of France....there ISN’T any king of France. > For some reason, overt denial is straightforward with negation but not without it. This seems to suggest that cancellation is not a unified phenomenon.

19 A pragmatic definition: conclusion > We have seen that a cancellation analysis of presuppositions is fruitful. > We have seen that – as it stands – a cancellation analysis is not without counterexamples. > We have seen that there are differences between cancellation of presuppositions in positive and in negative propositions. This seems to suggest that cancellation is not as unified a phenomenon as it might seem at first sight.

Back to 1973

22 Karttunen 1973: question 1

23 Karttunen 1973: question 2

24 Karttunen 1973: questions 3 and 4

25 Karttunen 1973: question 5

26 Karttunen 1973: question 6

27 Karttunen 1973: question 7

28 Karttunen 1973: question 8

29 Karttunen 1973: questions 9 and 10

30 Karttunen 1973: question 11

31 Karttunen 1973: question 12

32 Karttunen 1973: question 13

33 Karttunen 1973: question 14

34 A small complication

35 A small complication

36 Discussion > Karttunen tried to pursue a purely semantic analysis of presuppositions but does recognize the role of context (speaker’s beliefs). It therefore qualifies as a mixed analysis (semantic/pragmatic). > Karttunen differs from Gazdar in that he assumes presupposition never get cancelled, they simply don’t always project to the level of the compound sentence.

37 Discussion “However, there are problems for this analysis. From a conceptual point of view, the positing of plugs, holes and filters seems largely to be arbitrarily stipulated than independently motivated, thus lacking explanatory power.” “Somewhat related is the problem that under this analysis, negation is forced to be treated as ambiguous: descriptive negation as a hole but metalinguistic negation as a plus.” > How arbitrary is the division Karttunen proposes? Admittedly, filters are weird things but once we put these aside it’s just plugs that are special. During the reading of the paper we concluded that their behaviour is not really surprising. > The problem of negation is of course a real one but quite some people accept this cost.

38 Discussion “Turning next to empirical considerations, counterexamples are not hard to find. First of all, a presupposition embedded under a plug, for example, can sometimes survive unscathed...” > Churchill said that he would never regret being tough with Stalin. Is it really true that the sentence as a whole presupposes that Churchill was tough with Stalin? If so, this is a very subtle judgement.

39 Discussion “Next, the filtering conditions also make wrong predictions...” > It’s possible that John has children and it’s possible that his children are away. True but this is a detail of the analysis that is concerned with his children referring to the children that have been hinted at before: “It’s possible that John has children and it’s possible that these children are away”. This prediction doesn’t pose a real threat to the enterprise that Karttunen is undertaking.

40 Discussion “Finally, the filtering-satisfaction theory cannot accommodate defeasibility of presupposition...” > There is no king of France. Therefore the king of France isn’t bald. As we saw at the very end, Karttunen was considering to include ways of allowing certain presuppositions not to project. The fact that this is not completely worked out doesn’t mean that it would be undoable. What is clear though is that a story that doesn’t take into account the context (speaker’s beliefs) will not be sufficient.

Exercises

Heim 1982/1992

43 The gist of Heim’s proposal > A sentence (or part thereof) can only be felicitously uttered if its presuppositions are entailed by what precedes the sentence. John’s children didn’t come. > Can only be uttered if it’s clear from what precedes that John has children. > Presuppositions are those pieces of information that have to be assumed to be able to felicitously utter a sentence.

44 Comparison with Gazdar and Karttunen > What distinguishes Heim from Gazdar is that Heim doesn’t allow presuppositions to get cancelled. > Heim resembles Karttunen in assuming that presuppositions cannot get cancelled. Every presupposition has to be satisfied by the preceding context. She takes Karttunen’s idea that context plays an important role to the next level by working out a model where this is not only implemented for filters but for all presuppositions.

45 To the rescue of Karttunen

46 To the rescue of Karttunen Stalnaker 1974 (worked out in Heim 1992)

47 A problem... > A sentence (or part thereof) can only be felicitously uttered if its presuppositions are entailed by what precedes the sentence. > What to do with examples like the following: > Assuming that the information that the new guy has a wife is new, it would seem that Bob’s utterance has to be infelicitous. This is contrary to fact.

48 A solution... > People are very cooperative and to a certain extent they are willing to accommodate information that hasn’t been mentioned before. > Accommodation A process whereby contexts are adjusted so as to make update possible when presuppositions are not entailed by the preceding context.

Summary so far

Semantics Pragmatics meaning bits that are insensitive to negation meaning bits that one normally assumes to be the case for a sentence to be uttered felicitously Karttunen meaning bits that have a very intricate sensitivity pattern: they are always there but they needn’t make it to the highest level Heim meaning bits that have to be in the context for a sentence to be uttered felicitously

presupposition presupposition trigger projection problem plug, hole, filter potential presupposition actual presupposition cancellation procedure accommodation

A radical alternative

53 A radical alternative > Presuppositions don’t exist. > They are entailments. > Main challenge: to explain why a standard entailment is never seen as something that has to be the case for a sentence to be felicitously uttered whereas presuppositions are. > This is a role for pragmatics...

54 A worked-out example (Simons 2005 working out the account by Atlas 2005)

Summary

Semantics Pragmatics meaning bits that are insensitive to negation meaning bits that one normally assumes to be the case for a sentence to be uttered felicitously Karttunen meaning bits that have a very intricate sensitivity pattern: they are always there but they needn’t make it to the highest level Heim meaning bits that have to be in the context for a sentence to be uttered felicitously Radical Pragmatics entailments with extensive pragmatics

Exercises